Die erste Fahrt zum Mond (1964)

Die erste Fahrt zum Mond: Directed by Nathan Juran. With Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries, Miles Malleson. When a spaceship lands on the moon, it is hailed as a new accomplishment, before it becomes clear that a Victorian party completed the journey in 1899, leading investigators to that mission’s last survivor.

“Five years before the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touch down on the moon, this film adaption of the H.G. Wells story First Men in the Moon came to the screen. A moon expedition has finally landed and to the amazement of all a perfectly preserved union jack is found and presumably claiming this large piece of real estate for the United Kingdom.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd a diary with three names in it gives the names of those people who were on this first lunar expedition. One of them is still alive and in a nursing home in Great Britain. Itu0026#39;s Edward Judd, now in his eighties or nineties as youu0026#39;d have it and he has an amazing adventure to tell.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI use the phrase deliberately because such an amazing adventure is the kind of stuff Stephen Spielberg would find ideal. And if he reads this, maybe heu0026#39;ll think on it as a future project. But if he does it, it will have to be without the special special effects of Ray Harryhausen who created an enchanting, but very dangerous world on the moon.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eJuddu0026#39;s story is how he and his fiancé Martha Hyer got involved with an eccentric scientist Lionel Jeffries. Jeffries may look eccentric as he usually does in his roles, but heu0026#39;s developed nothing less than a totally unique form of propulsion and he knows what he wants to do with it. Nothing less than a trip to the moon.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLike Jeanette Macdonald in Maytime or Gloria Stuart in Titanic, Judd from the manu0026#39;s point of view tells the story of his lost love Hyer and that unique trip to the moon. As to what happens there and what happens to Jeffries, Judd, and Hyer you have to see the film for that.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSince itu0026#39;s a Ray Harryhausen film you kind of know what to expect and Harryhausen delivers in grand style. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt almost makes you believe that it was Judd, Jeffries, and Hyer who took that one small step for man first.”